Moves updates privacy policy following Facebook acquisition

Moves was acquired by Facebook back in late-April. At the time of the acquisition it was said Moves "will continue to operate as a standalone app." That bit seemed to suggest the app would continue to be developed as it had been, but there was some doubt in terms of the future.

The Moves team mentioned how they would be "joining Facebook’s talented team to work on building and improving their products and services." Naturally, the use of the "their" suggests the Move team would be working on Facebook stuff. But while there was some uncertainty towards the future of the Moves app -- there was also some concern over the data they were collecting.

At the time of the acquisition the Moves team said they have no plans to commingle the data with Facebook. Flash forward till today and an updated privacy policy may be telling a slightly different story. Said policy now includes the following;

“We may share information, including personally identifying information, with our Affiliates (companies that are part of our corporate groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook) to help provide, understand, and improve our Services,”

For those looking for the change -- before the update the policy said they did not “disclose an individual user’s data to third parties.” There really isn't anything saying Moves shouldn't, or couldn't update their privacy policy, however something this close to the acquisition may rub users wrong.

The Facebook spokesperson who originally said the two companies would not commingle data followed up with The Wall Street Journal on Monday. She stuck by that original statement, but added how the two companies now plan to share data. Clarifying that a bit, the same spokesperson offered the following clarification to The Verge;

"Commingling, or merging, data would allow us to identify Moves users who are also Facebook users — we have no plans to do that. In other words, Facebook is not adding Moves user data to a Facebook user’s Facebook account."

It seems the data will be shared (but not mixed) simply because Facebook will be helping support the Moves app.